Re: [Marxism] Hersch's latest lunacy

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

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Much of this is in support of what those arguing against the
"anti-imperalist" left have been saying, is it not? Sure there is plenty
lacking, but he says the US military, Assad regime, Russia and Israel
have been coordinating within Syria.

I've seen the "anti-imperalist" tankies on twitter become very riled up
by this article.
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Re: [Marxism] Hersch's latest lunacy

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 12/21/15 1:42 PM, Tristan Sloughter via Marxism wrote:

Much of this is in support of what those arguing against the
"anti-imperalist" left have been saying, is it not? Sure there is plenty
lacking, but he says the US military, Assad regime, Russia and Israel
have been coordinating within Syria.

I've seen the "anti-imperalist" tankies on twitter become very riled up
by this article.


I'll have to keep this in mind. I plan to write something on Hersh's 
article and on Andrew Cockburn's in the latest Harpers that is 100 
percent garbage.

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Re: [Marxism] Hersch's latest lunacy

[MM via Marxism]

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> On Dec 21, 2015, at 1:46 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> On 12/21/15 1:42 PM, Tristan Sloughter via Marxism wrote:
>> Much of this is in support of what those arguing against the
>> "anti-imperalist" left have been saying, is it not? Sure there is plenty
>> lacking, but he says the US military, Assad regime, Russia and Israel
>> have been coordinating within Syria.
>> 
>> I've seen the "anti-imperalist" tankies on twitter become very riled up
>> by this article.
> 
> I'll have to keep this in mind. I plan to write something on Hersh's article 
> and on Andrew Cockburn's in the latest Harpers that is 100 percent garbage.

For some time now I’ve been trying to anticipate how the cartoonish 
anti-imperialist position is going to play out, as and when reality makes it 
increasingly impossible to maintain the simplistic and untenable: Will it take 
the form of a slow reorientation, possibly imperceptible to the person making 
it, so that they come out the other side insisting they had “always believed” 
something or other contrary to the Baathist apologetics they engage in now? Or 
will there be some kind of genuine reckoning and admission? My money’s on the 
former.
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[Marxism] Murray Bookchin in Syria

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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I have previously written about the way Bookchin felt about Bernie Sanders, 
this is a development that I wish had come across my radar earlier. I apologize 
in advance to those who will say that they have been saying it all along, I 
have been under the weather for a while.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/syrian-kurds-murray-bookchin_5655e7e2e4b079b28189e3df

Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
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[Marxism] Fwd: Seymour Hersh's bizarre new conspiracy theory about the US and Syria, explained - Vox

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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The entirety of Hersh's allegations here are sourced to "a former senior 
adviser to the Joint Chiefs." We are not told the capacity of the 
adviser's role, nor how the adviser acquired this information, nor how a 
former adviser would know what is still happening. Hersh provides no 
other sources — anonymous or otherwise — who support the story.


http://www.vox.com/2015/12/21/10634002/seymour-hersh-syria-joint-chiefs
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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[ioannis aposperites via Marxism]

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http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article36730

 Éric Toussaint : " The conclusion to be drawn is that a movement that 
wants to take on governmental responsibilities must be prepared to live 
up to the support it has from the people. If you propose to the 
population that they reject the conditions dictated by the creditors, if 
you propose to pursue an alternative program, then you have to be 
prepared to take the measures necessary for carrying out that program. 
We need to have social and political forces that are concretely prepared 
to stand up to the creditors and disobey the creditors. That’s the 
fundamental lesson to be learned."


Alleluia! That was exactly the contention of SYRIZA before 2015. But as 
far back as we can see, there have not been a single reformist party to 
take that way. On the opposite they have all put the "people" aside. 
SYRIZA did have "social and political forces that were concretely 
prepared to stand up to the creditors" but it had prepare them, all time 
long and especially since 2012, to do so, only on an electoral base. And 
this was SYRIZA's way to put them aside.


If a party/government is to take the necessary measures to deal with the 
situation, in favour of the oppressed and based on a people's movement, 
then for that purpose an other type of party is required, not a 
reformist one. But if a party of that kind becomes a social/political 
majority, it will admittedly have far more ambitious goals than those of 
the self-censored Thessaloniki program, and all those Toussaint's 
concerns might be just irrelevant.


If you do dispose the "social and political forces" that are concretely 
prepared" **by you** to really "stand up to the creditors" it will not 
be so just to "disobey" them by not paying back the "debt"; it will be 
to disobey them as capitalists and not as "creditors".


JA

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[Marxism] US and its itchy trigger finger.

[Prashad, Vijay via Marxism]

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On Days of Revolt, I joined Chris Hedges to discuss the roots of US militarism, 
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content=view=31=74=15303.
 Ends on Arrighi.

Warmly, Vijay.

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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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Thanks for the Rooksby link. I hadn't heard of him, but see now he has
intervened in debates in ISJ over left reformism, and has contributed at
least two pieces to Jacobin on Corbyn - the theme of one of which is to
tell the radical left to shut up and sit quietly in the backseat of the
Corbyn car.
The particular essay linked by Louis is all you could ask for by way of
warning  of what a truly reactionary guy Rooksby is. To sum up his article:
"We can't take power because if we do the bourgeoisie won't let us
expropriate them and so we'll still end up powerless. What's more we can't
fight the state and if we try it'll end like Syria. Anyway we don't know
what we would do if we had socialism anyway."
He's either blissfully ignorant of a century and a half of heroic workers'
struggle against naysayers like himself, or cynically ignoring it.

On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 12:56 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> On 12/21/15 12:39 PM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism wrote:
>
>> What was the point of running hard for government if so little could be
>> achieved in government?
>>
>
> That's the crucial question. Edward Rooksby takes this up in an article on
> his blog:
>
> The ‘reformist’ way of attempting to resolve the dilemma (Bernstein’s the
> emblematic representative of this path – though I think a very lucid one
> and quite honest about what he was doing) is essentially to kick the end
> goal into the long grass. For ‘reformism’ the socialist goal is always
> already not just yet, just over the horizon, relegated to a perpetually
> postponed future. This is, of course, a kind of bad faith on the part of
> those apparently committed to the attainment this end goal (though not
> necessarily on the part of Bernstein for who, famously, the ‘ultimate goal’
> of socialism was nothing, the ‘movement’ everything).
>
> But the ‘revolutionary’ resolution of the dilemma has always seemed to me
> not to be a resolution either. Indeed it’s the mirror image of the
> ‘reformist’ side-stepping of the terms of the problem. Crudely, it pivots
> on a kind of in-a-flash-everything-is-transformed semi-millenarianism. Few
> ‘revolutionaries’, of course, argue that we can move straight to socialism
> (first comes the transitional period of ‘the dictatorship of the
> proletariat’ after the ‘seizure of political power’) – but the point is
> that the idea of ‘the revolutionary seizure of power’ serves as a kind of
> magic-bullet solution to all problems and as such it is not really a
> solution at all but a rhetorical dodge.
>
> full:
> https://edrooksby.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/a-depresssing-line-of-thought/
>
> I have my own thoughts on this that will be fleshed out in my concluding
> article on Swedish social democracy that will address a 1980 NLR article by
> erstwhile Analytical Marxist Adam Przeworski titled "Social Democracy as a
> Historical Phenomenon" where he writes:
>
> A party that participates in elections must forsake some alternative
> tactics: this is the frequently diagnosed tactical dilemma. As long as
> workers did not have full political rights, no choice between
> insurrectionary and parliamentary tactics was necessary. Indeed, political
> rights could be conquered by those who did not have them only through
> extraparliamentary activities. César de Paepe, the founder of the Parti
> Socialiste Brabançon, wrote in 1877 that ‘in using our constitutional right
> and legal means at our disposal we do not renounce the right to
> revolution’. [7] This statement was echoed frequently, notably by Engels in
> 1895. Alex Danielsson, a Swedish left-wing socialist, maintained in a more
> pragmatic vein that Social Democrats should not commit themselves to ‘a
> dogma regarding tactics that would bind the party to act according to the
> same routine under all circumstances’. [8] That the mass strike should be
> used to achieve universal (and that meant male) suffrage was not
> questioned, and both the Belgian and Swedish parties led successful mass
> strikes that resulted in extensions of suffrage.
>
> Yet as soon as universal suffrage was obtained, the choice between the
> ‘legal’ and the ‘extra-parliamentary’ tactics had to be made. J. McGurk,
> the Chairman of the Labour Party, put it sharply in 1919: ‘We are either
> constutionalists or we are not 

[Marxism] What was Jesus?

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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At Xmas time, an interesting piece:
Jesus wasn't a Christian; he was a Jewish revolutionary:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/jesus-wasnt-a-christian-he-was-a-jewish-revolutionary/
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[Marxism] Bourgeois media resorting to sleight-of-hand to put Trump in the White House

[Clay Claiborne via Marxism]

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http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2015/12/bourgeois-media-resorting-to-sleight-of.html 


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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Activist actor James Cromwell arrested in power plant protest | Film | The Guardian

[Sheldon Ranz via Marxism]

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Awesome!  From Stretch Cunningham on "All in the Family" to Zefrem Cochrane
in "Star trek: First Contact", who knew?

On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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> *
>
> Turns out that the star of "Babe" was a leftist for as long as me.
>
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/21/actor-james-cromwell-arrested-ny-power-plant-protest
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[Marxism] Fwd: Japanese government asks universities to close social sciences and humanities faculties - ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://monitor.icef.com/2015/09/japanese-government-asks-universities-to-close-social-sciences-and-humanities-faculties/
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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 12/21/15 7:54 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:

he has intervened in debates in ISJ over left reformism,


The ISJ referenced above is the theoretical magazine of the British SWP 
that has been hemorrhaging members at a dizzying pace. Speaking for 
myself, if Rooksby was on the other side of a debate with Callinicos or 
his henchmen, I'd know which side to align with--no problem.

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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 12/21/15 12:39 PM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism wrote:

What was the point of running hard for government if so little could be 
achieved in government?


That's the crucial question. Edward Rooksby takes this up in an article 
on his blog:


The ‘reformist’ way of attempting to resolve the dilemma (Bernstein’s 
the emblematic representative of this path – though I think a very lucid 
one and quite honest about what he was doing) is essentially to kick the 
end goal into the long grass. For ‘reformism’ the socialist goal is 
always already not just yet, just over the horizon, relegated to a 
perpetually postponed future. This is, of course, a kind of bad faith on 
the part of those apparently committed to the attainment this end goal 
(though not necessarily on the part of Bernstein for who, famously, the 
‘ultimate goal’ of socialism was nothing, the ‘movement’ everything).


But the ‘revolutionary’ resolution of the dilemma has always seemed to 
me not to be a resolution either. Indeed it’s the mirror image of the 
‘reformist’ side-stepping of the terms of the problem. Crudely, it 
pivots on a kind of in-a-flash-everything-is-transformed 
semi-millenarianism. Few ‘revolutionaries’, of course, argue that we can 
move straight to socialism (first comes the transitional period of ‘the 
dictatorship of the proletariat’ after the ‘seizure of political power’) 
– but the point is that the idea of ‘the revolutionary seizure of power’ 
serves as a kind of magic-bullet solution to all problems and as such it 
is not really a solution at all but a rhetorical dodge.


full: 
https://edrooksby.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/a-depresssing-line-of-thought/


I have my own thoughts on this that will be fleshed out in my concluding 
article on Swedish social democracy that will address a 1980 NLR article 
by erstwhile Analytical Marxist Adam Przeworski titled "Social Democracy 
as a Historical Phenomenon" where he writes:


A party that participates in elections must forsake some alternative 
tactics: this is the frequently diagnosed tactical dilemma. As long as 
workers did not have full political rights, no choice between 
insurrectionary and parliamentary tactics was necessary. Indeed, 
political rights could be conquered by those who did not have them only 
through extraparliamentary activities. César de Paepe, the founder of 
the Parti Socialiste Brabançon, wrote in 1877 that ‘in using our 
constitutional right and legal means at our disposal we do not renounce 
the right to revolution’. [7] This statement was echoed frequently, 
notably by Engels in 1895. Alex Danielsson, a Swedish left-wing 
socialist, maintained in a more pragmatic vein that Social Democrats 
should not commit themselves to ‘a dogma regarding tactics that would 
bind the party to act according to the same routine under all 
circumstances’. [8] That the mass strike should be used to achieve 
universal (and that meant male) suffrage was not questioned, and both 
the Belgian and Swedish parties led successful mass strikes that 
resulted in extensions of suffrage.


Yet as soon as universal suffrage was obtained, the choice between the 
‘legal’ and the ‘extra-parliamentary’ tactics had to be made. J. McGurk, 
the Chairman of the Labour Party, put it sharply in 1919: ‘We are either 
constutionalists or we are not constitutionalists. If we are 
constitutionalists, if we believe in the efficacy of the political 
weapon (and we do, or why do we have a Labour Party?) then it is both 
unwise and undemocratic because we fail to get a majority at the polls 
to turn around and demand that we should substitute industrial action.’ 
[9] The turning point in the tactics of several parties occurred after 
the failures of general strikes organized around economic issues. While 
strikes oriented toward suffrage had been generally successful, the use 
of mass strikes for economic goals resulted in political disasters in 
Belgium in 1902, [10] Sweden in 1909, [11] France in 1920, [12] Norway 
in 1921, [13] and Great Britain in 1926. [14] All these strikes were 
defeated; in the aftermath trade-union membership was decimated and 
repressive legislation was passed. These common experiences of defeat 
and repression directed socialist parties toward an almost exclusive 
reliance on electoral tactics. Electoral participation was necessary to 
protect the movement from repression: this was the lesson drawn by 
socialist leaders. As Kautsky wrote already in 1891, ‘The economic 
struggle demands political rights and these will not fall from heaven.’ [15]


To win votes of people other than workers, particularly the petty 
bourgeosie, to form alliances and 

[Marxism] Fwd: Activist actor James Cromwell arrested in power plant protest | Film | The Guardian

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Turns out that the star of "Babe" was a leftist for as long as me.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/21/actor-james-cromwell-arrested-ny-power-plant-protest
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[Marxism] Fwd: Undoing the Politics of Powerlessness — Medium

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(Reflections on Occupy Wall Street.)

We need to build groups — collectives, organizations, affinity groups, 
whatever — because groups are what keep us in the movement, they’re what 
keep movement moments going, where we transform, how we fight, and the 
best way to hold each other accountable to the long struggle for 
liberation. We need to win small victories that open up space for bigger 
ones, and we must celebrate them, because that’s the best inoculation 
against a politic based in fear that nothing is winnable. We have to 
develop powerful visions for the world we want, so we can put those 
small victories inside a broader strategy that strikes at the roots of 
the systems we face. We must all engage in the hard and transformational 
work to become our most powerful selves; after all, it is truly the only 
way we even stand a chance.


https://medium.com/@YotamMarom/undoing-the-politics-of-powerlessness-72931fee5bda
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[Marxism] The Communist Manifesto Project

[David McMullen via Marxism]

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I want to introduce my new website entitled The Communist Manifesto 
Project.


https://sites.google.com/site/communistmanifestoproject/


Its main feature is an 8,000 word essay called 'A 21st Century 
Perspective in the Spirit of The Communist Manifesto'. Its introduction 
provides a good summary.


https://sites.google.com/site/communistmanifestoproject/cp21c


I have also recently added a short piece to the website entitled 'Marx 
was no Green'. It is a critical look at the ecological Marxism of John 
Bellamy Foster


https://sites.google.com/site/communistmanifestoproject/greenmarx



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Re: [Marxism] The Communist Manifesto Project

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 12/21/15 5:43 AM, David McMullen via Marxism wrote:

I have also recently added a short piece to the website entitled 'Marx
was no Green'. It is a critical look at the ecological Marxism of John
Bellamy Foster

https://sites.google.com/site/communistmanifestoproject/greenmarx



"We need large emergency facilities to deal with super-volcanoes and 
tsunamis. We will have to prepare for the effects of major climate 
change such rising sea levels and eventually the next ice age.  Major 
space programs will among other things protect us from meteors and allow 
us to start moving off the planet in order to explore, settle and 
exploit extraterrestrial resources. It will be a long time before we run 
out of things to do with iron, steel, glass etc. This increasing 
production under communism will proceed with an on-going decoupling from 
impacts on the environment. We will see food produced with less and less 
use of land and water, and the industrial waste streams in extraction, 
production and disposal cleaned up and reduced."



If only Workers Spatula could come up with satire half as good.
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[Marxism] Fwd: What It's Like to Be Noam Chomsky's Assistant - The Chronicle of Higher Education

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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I could see from his work that his memory was a force of nature, and one 
day I dared to ask him about it. He told me he has what he calls 
"buffers," or little drawers in his brain that he opens to retrieve 
conversations and correspondence from as long as 50 years ago. He told 
me he thought for a long time that everyone had this ability.


http://chronicle.com/article/What-Its-Like-to-Be-Noam/234667

I got some exposure to this about a decade ago when I was walking along 
120th Street near B'way during lunch when a cab pulled up and Chomsky 
stepped out on his way to some speaking engagement at Columbia. Since 
his daughter was a Tecnica volunteer, I thought I'd introduce myself. 
Five seconds after my introduction, he began commenting about what his 
daughter and other volunteers had done in Nicaragua more than a decade 
earlier. My jaw dropped.

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[Marxism] Fwd: Grim Video Shows Huge Waves of Industrial Waste That Have Left Scores Missing in China | VICE News

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Someone tell John Bellamy Foster to begin reading Vice.

https://news.vice.com/article/grim-video-shows-huge-waves-of-industrial-waste-that-have-left-scores-missing-in-china
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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Ralph Johansen via Marxism]

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ioannis aposperites wrote

  a.. 
  http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article36730


Éric Toussaint : " The conclusion to be drawn is that a movement that wants 
to take on governmental responsibilities must be prepared to live up to the 
support it has from the people. If you propose to the population that they 
reject the conditions dictated by the creditors, if you propose to pursue an 
alternative program, then you have to be prepared to take the measures 
necessary for carrying out that program. We need to have social and political 
forces that are concretely prepared to stand up to the creditors and disobey 
the creditors. That’s the fundamental lesson to be learned." 

Alleluia! That was exactly the contention of SYRIZA before 2015. But as far 
back as we can see, there have not been a single reformist party to take that 
way. On the opposite they have all put the "people" aside. SYRIZA did have 
"social and political forces that were concretely prepared to stand up to the 
creditors" but it had prepare them, all time long and especially since 2012, to 
do so, only on an electoral base. And this was SYRIZA's way to put them aside. 

If a party/government is to take the necessary measures to deal with the 
situation, in favour of the oppressed and based on a people's movement, then 
for that purpose an other type of party is required, not a reformist one. But 
if a party of that kind becomes a social/political majority, it will admittedly 
have far more ambitious goals than those of the self-censored Thessaloniki 
program, and all those Toussaint's concerns might be just irrelevant. 

If you do dispose the "social and political forces" that are concretely 
prepared" **by you** to really "stand up to the creditors" it will not be so 
just to "disobey" them by not paying back the "debt"; it will be to disobey 
them as capitalists and not as "creditors". 

JA



More specific basic question is what is the class base of the actors depended 
upon to back up available choices. Class interest and its limitations are 
central to defining what is feasible.  
http://www.leninology.co.uk/2015/01/notes-on-greece.html is a good start, as 
Seymour said back in January. And the answers he found may be an indication of 
why he has said little more, and why, given the relation of forces, Syriza’s 
negotiating position crumbled by late February.

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[Marxism] Fwd: TASS: World - Foreign minister: Bahrain appreciates Russia's efforts to rescue Syria

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Bahrain joins the access of resistance.

http://tass.ru/en/world/844504
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[Marxism] blast from the past

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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I do hope the moderator will indulge me here.  I have been going though my
old floppy discs and have rescued some files from oblivion.  Among them was
a 1998 polemic with Professor Carl Plantinga of Calvin College.  I reviewed
his book on documentary film on the film philosophy list and he wrote back
an angry reply, which I cannot find.  But the substance of our disagreement
was Plantinga's gushing praise of Ed Murrow and his attack on McCarthy. So
I wrote back attacking on the philosophical and political fronts and below
is the political onslaught. If I may say so myself, it reads pretty well
some 17 years later. I would only harden it today.

comradely

Gary

24.3.98


Of Politics and Objectivity: Responding to Carl R. Plantinga





1. Introduction



I was delighted to be informed by Daniel that Carl R. Plantinga was going
to reply to my and Jay Raskin's review of his book, _Rhetoric and
Representation in Nonfiction Movies_,

However Plantinga did not like my review of his book, tending to see it as
a "political diatribe".  Admittedly there was political comment in my
review but there was also a good deal more philosophy.  Ah well, that's all
one.  "If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen", I say.



Now there are two distinct areas of concern - political and philosophical.
To be frank I am anxious about pursuing political discussions on a list
devoted to film and philosophy, but I trust the moderator will bear with me
a little if I reply to the main points that Plantinga has made before
plunging into matters philosophical.



I would advise the reader who is not interested in political discussion to
skip the politics and head straight to the philosophy.  There by drawing
upon the work of Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier and William Outhwaite, I
provide what I would argue is the solution to the objectivity problem.





2. Politics



Let us go back to the source in some attempt to achieve clarity. Plantinga
wrote:-



"In this broadcast (Report on Senator McCarthy) Edward R. Murrow, at great
personal risk, stepped out of his institutional role as "objective" news
broadcaster to take on the powerful Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and his
irresponsible red-baiting". (Plantinga, 1997: 210)



I wrote



"Moreover Plantinga's characterization of McCarthyism as "irresponsible
red-baiting" (: 210) should not be allowed to go unchallenged.  The “red
baiting” consisted in the terrorizing and intimidation of thousands, the
wrecking of lives and the vicious persecution of progressive minded people,
and the destruction of decent trade unionists. "



I then attempted to illustrate the inadequacy of Plantinga's formulation of
the nature of McCarthyism by drawing upon the standard philosophical
instance - Isaiah Berlin's argument concerning correct perlocutionary force.



I wrote



"I am reminded here of Isaiah Berlin's famous comparison between the
following sentences about Nazi rule in Germany.



a. The country was depopulated.

b. Millions of people died.

c. Millions of people were killed.

d. Millions of people were massacred.

(In Bhaskar, 1979: 75)



All of these sentences are true but only d. is acceptable as it alone pays
some tribute to the dead.  The victims of Auschwitz deserve better than
"depopulated". Similarly those who suffered at the hands of Joseph McCarthy
(and President Truman) deserve better than "irresponsible"."



Plantinga lost the plot here.  He suggests that I am proposing an
"analogous understatement about the Nazi Holocaust".  He seems to be
unaware of the import of Berlin's example.  Thus he accuses me of inferring
that he is a Nazi apologist. I did no such thing.  If I had had the thought
or even a slight suspicion that Plantinga was a fascist I would not have
paid a penny for his book, never mind the $95 it cost me.  Nor would I be
bothering with a reply.



I must, though, confess that before I opened Plantinga's book, I was
expecting him to be a liberal- a typically apolitical product of the
Carroll-Bordwell school of thought. Now it is true that I indulged in some
tautology and described him as a "naive liberal".  That was a little wicked
of me but in my defence I would point out that I could have compounded the
tautology by saying "naive American liberal".  Howsoever I could have
characterized his politics, the truth is that nothing in Plantinga's book
or reply has shaken my initial expectations.



Let me try and clarify my original point.  Plantinga was wrong to state
that McCarthyism was "irresponsible red-baiting".  It was much, much worse.
Moreover I say this with some force for the point is an important one.  From
1947 onward the Left in the USA 

Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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Louis Proyect quotes Edward Rooksby


But the ‘revolutionary’ resolution of the dilemma has always seemed to 
me not to be a resolution either. Indeed it’s the mirror image of the 
‘reformist’ side-stepping of the terms of the problem. Crudely, it 
pivots on a kind of in-a-flash-everything-is-transformed 
semi-millenarianism. Few ‘revolutionaries’, of course, argue that we can 
move straight to socialism (first comes the transitional period of ‘the 
dictatorship of the proletariat’ after the ‘seizure of political power’) 
– but the point is that the idea of ‘the revolutionary seizure of power’ 
serves as a kind of magic-bullet solution to all problems and as such it 
is not really a solution at all but a rhetorical dodge.

Ken Hiebert replies:
I think the Rooksby characterization of revolutionary politics is a caricature. 
 In any case, it has no bearing on the proposals put forward by Toussaint. 
http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article36730
Those who are interested can read Toussaint's piece and see if there is 
anything in it that suggests in a flash everything is transformed.  Does 
anything in Toussaint's piece strike you as semi-millenarian?
In particular check out the paragraph  A different policy was desirable and was 
possible




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Re: [Marxism] Murray Bookchin

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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>From a Facebook friend -

Bookchin was a believer in the concept of "post scarcity anarchism." He
could have been forgiven for this up until the 1970's as a result of the
almost 30 year post World War 2 boom. He claimed that economic austerity
was no longer an issue. All the left had to worry about was the environment
and "liberty."

Bookchin, inexcusably continued to hold this position after the recession
of the early 1980's, at that time the worst economic downturn since the
depression of the 1930's. Bookchin, nor his US followers, were, and are no
friends of the poor, and the unemployed.

The Syrian Kurds would do well to look for inspiration from another source.
Bookchin spoke at the 1976 Libertarian convention. The Libertarians
supported and continue to support a laissez faire brand of capitalism.
Bookchin remarked, at that convention: 'If I were a voting man, I'd vote
for MacBride". Roger MacBride was the Libertarian Party nominee, for the
1976 US Presidential election.


.


I have previously written about the way Bookchin felt about Bernie Sanders,
this is a development that I wish had come across my radar earlier. I
apologize in advance to those who will say that they have been saying it
all along, I have been under the weather for a while.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/syrian-kurds-murray-bookchin_5655e7e2e4b079b28189e3df

Best regards,
Andrew Stewart
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[Marxism] [UCE] Re: Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Lüko Willms via Marxism]

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 on Montag, 21. Dezember 2015 at 18:39, Ken Hiebert via Marxism wrote:

> Ken Hiebert replies:
> You could be right that the relationship of forces left no options
> for the Greek government.  Which suggests that a strategy that was
> based on winning election to government was mistaken.  What was the
> point of running hard for government if so little could be achieved in 
> government?

  Or to put it bluntly: 
   
  All this talk about "broad left" alliances aiming at getting seats in the 
institutions of the bourgeois state has been proven in Greece as what it is: 
creeping in the back side of the capitalist class, and using "mass 
mobilisations" only as a pressure group to cajole the powers that be into a 
more friendly position. But not to enable the working people to become the 
masters of their own fate. 

   In Spain, quite some people had begun sobering up about Podemos after the 
capitulation  of SYRIZA. 

 
Cheers, 
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt/Main, Germany
http://www.mlwerke.de
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Re: [Marxism] Libya - the rule of the militias

[Clay Claiborne via Marxism]

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What would the rule of a self-armed people look like and what would its
critics call it?

Qaddafi's police state murder of 1200 prisoners in 2009?, that wasn't chaos.
Sending in helo gunships to settle southern tribal disputes, that wasn't
chaos.
When Qaddafi gunned down 700 protesters in Green Sq. 21 Feb 2011, that
wasn't chaos
Venezuela, with 10 times the murder rate of Libya in 2014, that was chaos,
Syria is better off with no no-fly zone.

I guess its all a matter of perspective.

Expecting a revolution with no chaos is like expecting a revolution with no
detractors.
.
Why would I read this article? I already know what happened and why.


Clay Claiborne, Director
Vietnam: American Holocaust 
Linux Beach Productions
Venice, CA 90291
(310) 581-1536

Read my blogs at the Linux Beach 

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[Marxism] dealig with a racist society + poverty = stress that causes obesity/diabetes

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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Perceived discrimination contributes to poorer mental and physical health
among ethnic minorities. When study participants moved to low-poverty
neighborhoods, they reported feeling safer, less depressed, and less
anxious—in other words, less stressed. “Somehow, our social environment is
getting under people’s skin and causing a cascade of things to occur in the
body,” says Rebecca Hasson, director of the Childhood Disparities Research
Laboratory at the University of Michigan. “Ethnic minorities are exposed to
a lot more stressors. Is that related to their elevated diabetes risk?”


http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/why-living-in-a-poor-neighborhood-can-make-you-fat
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Re: [Marxism] Hersch's latest lunacy

[Michael Karadjis via Marxism]

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On 12/21/15 1:42 PM, Tristan Sloughter via Marxism wrote:

Much of this is in support of what those arguing against the
"anti-imperalist" left have been saying, is it not? Sure there is 
plenty

lacking, but he says the US military, Assad regime, Russia and Israel
have been coordinating within Syria.



Yes, but the point is it doesn't need all the conspiracy. When I first 
heard there was yet another Hersch conspiracy piece, all backed up by 
the assertions of *one* unnamed "high-placed source", I was determined 
to not waste time reading it. But the critique by Max Fisher at 
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/21/10634002/seymour-hersh-syria-joint-chiefs 
made it look interesting. Basically, Hersch imagines that much of the 
Pentagon went behind Obama's back over the last few years - Obama wanted 
to help the Syrian rebels, while the Pentagon and various other powerful 
figures in the US foreign policy establishment sabotaged this by 
secretly working with Assad, Russia and Israel to ensure Assad remained 
in power.


Of course, most supporters of the Syrian revolution will have some 
trouble imagining Obama being the valiant knight wanting to aid the FSA, 
anything other in fact, but will have no trouble with all that the 
Pentagon is alleged to have been doing, except to most of us that just 
looks like the official US policy all along. It is almost as if Hersch 
has had to admit he was partially wrong, but admits it  in a roundabout 
kind of way by turning official US policy into this behind-the-scenes 
conspiracy. And Hersch's main point  throughout the article is that this 
"Pentagon" policy was correct - an anti-imperialist conspiracist way of 
saying US imperialist policy has been correct all along.


He does have some of the names right here - in fact one point where I 
think Fisher's piece is incorrect - Hersch names chair of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey as had of this Pentagon pro-Assad mob. 
Fisher claims Dempsey was more in favour of arming some very carefully 
"vetted" rebels" as early as 2012, but Obama was opposed. Perhaps, but 
by mid-2013, Dempsey was very anti-rebel, famously noting that *none* of 
the forces fighting the Assad regime serve American interests 
(http://blogs.reuters.com/david-rohde/2013/08/22/a-moment-of-truth-in-damascus-and-washington/; 
possibly he thought it had become too late due to Obama's hesitance a 
year earlier).


But in order to explain why the alleged conspiracy took place, he 
invents another conspiracy. According to this one, these fine Pentagon 
citizens discovered that the Evil Turk had been going behind Obama's 
back on the other side, transferring aid that the US was sending to 
moderate rebels over to Nusra and ISIS. As I haven't read the Hersch 
piece yet, I assume they first tried to warn Obama about this, but he 
was too thick or weak to do anything about it, that's why they had to 
defend American interests in their own way.


However, this allegedly began in 2013, when all the US was sending any 
rebels at all, no matter how "moderate," were radios, night goggles, 
tents, ready-meals and so on, not military equipment. Unless he means 
Saudi or Qatari arms which he assumes were approved by the US for 
certain groups etc. I'll need to read what he says here, unfortunately. 
But it appears to me almost certainly nonsense (Turkey and Qatar were 
already well-known to be arming moderate Islamist/MB types, who had 
nothing to do with Nusra, let alone ISIS, and the US already objected 
even to that, and attempted to block it, as various articles about the 
CIA's movements in southern Turley late 2012-early 2013 reveal quite 
clearly). 


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Re: [Marxism] Murray Bookchin

[Ratbag Media via Marxism]

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With this Bookchin angst in play I have to ask, "would you prefer that
the Kurds in their millions signed on with Enver Hoxha instead? Or
that they cannot liberate themselves as a people unless they get the
theory right (according the e-listing Marxmailers)?"

Lambasting an abstracted 'Bookchin' has no traction in the real world
of Turkish or Kurdish politics.

LINK: 'In defence of Murray Bookchin': http://links.org.au/node/3573

QUOTE:"Despite my political disagreement with anarchism and my
criticisms of his philosophy, Bookchin is one of my heroes. He devoted
his life to the cause of the liberation of humanity. Much of his
writing on society and ecology was brilliant, and deserves to be read
carefully by ecosocialists and everyone else who realises that we can
only save the world by radically changing society.

"While his efforts to enunciate a coherent revolutionary world view
didn’t succeed, at least he tried – in contrast to the shallow
thinkers who resorted to insults instead of reason. He’ll be read and
remembered when their books just gather dust.

"That’s why 'Recovering Bookchin' is an important book. It’s less
critical than it could be, but it is nevertheless an impressive effort
to rehabilitate Bookchin’s reputation, and to make his views
accessible to a new generation of left-green activists."


dave riley

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Re: [Marxism] A test of Israel Russia rapprochement

[Michael Karadjis via Marxism]

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It was very clear in the discussions between Putin and Netanyahu during 
the beginning of Russia's invasion of Syria that issues of the south, 
and specifically of Hezbollah, were to be left to Israeli discretion, 
which Putin made clear he "understood." It was part of the agreement 
whereby Israel would support Russia shoring up the regime, and 
decimating the rebels, mostly on the central and northern fronts. This 
has included the use of loads of Iranian and Hezbollah cannon fodder 
*but now with Russian leadership, the Iranian elements are no longer be 
in command of the Assadist forces*, as they essentially have been for a 
year or so; while Israel remains free to take shots at the same cannon 
fodder in the south. Israel and Russia both know full well that these 
Israeli propaganda strikes on Hezbollah are irrelevant to the military 
situation in the south (especially as the US, via Jordan keeps the FSA 
Southern Front on such a tight leash with a bunch of 'red lines" they 
must not pass).


Incidentally, in my view Russia just as much as Israel is happy to see 
these hundreds of Hezbollah and Iranian troops both do their part in 
fighting the rebels *but also be turned into cannon fodder* in the 
process; Russia and Iran are allies of convenience in Syria, yet rivals 
with somewhat different interests at the same time.


Indeed the targeting of someone like Kantar underlines precisely the 
propagandistic nature of these Israeli strikes - he is not historically 
a Hezbollah member, he was a Lebanese Druze member of a small 
Palestinian radical micro-sect who conducted a sea operation from 
Lebanon, landed in northern occupied Palestine where he allegedly seized 
a 4-year old girl from a civilian home and killed her, and then spent 29 
years in an Israeli prison. Hezbollah got him out of Israel as part of 
its prisoner swap, and should have stuck him on a farm somewhere to live 
out his retirement rather than recruiting  him; to Israel he is 
obviously a huge symbolic target, which will probably be very popular at 
home, yet is obviously irrelevant to the battle Hezbollah wages against 
the rebels in the south.


This article makes the case that Russia most certainly knew in advance 
of the Israeli operation, and had no objection:


Russia knew about Kuntar hit says expert
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/205210#.VnffrFKTWmV

Israel would not have struck Samir Kuntar inside area protected by S-400 
without Russia's knowledge, says IMRA.

By Gil Ronen
First Publish: 12/20/2015, 9:00 PM
Israel notified Russia that it intends to strike a target inside 
Damascus before the airstrike that killed Samir Kuntar, estimates Dr. 
Aaron Lerner, of Independent Media Review Analysis (IMRA).


Lerner bases this conclusion on the fact that the strike took place at a 
time that the Russian S-400 system is in full operation.
"Samir Kuntar is hardly such a critical target for Israel that it would 
employ techniques for engaging in operations within an active S-400 
envelope," he explained. The reason: such a strike would necessarily use 
techniques for evading the S-400 – assuming these techniques exist – and 
Russia would then be able to study these, in order to improve the S-400. 
Therefore, regardless of whether the strike succeeded, a future repeat 
of the same technique against more important targets would be likely to 
fail.


"The only conclusion that can be reached, therefore, is that the 
operation took place with the knowledge of Russia that jets would 
operate at specific locations within the S-400 envelope – and in this 
case in a route that passed through the area of Syria's capital," wrote 
Lerner.


-Original Message- 
From: A.R. G via Marxism

Sent: Monday, December 21, 2015 6:34 PM
To: Michael Karadjis
Subject: Re: [Marxism] A test of Israel Russia rapprochement

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Why would it argue against it?

Of course Russia has to stand by their allies, including Hezbollah. But
Israel appears to be cashing in on its closer ties with Russia by taking
out a long-time foe. It is not a secret that Israel has struck Syria
multiple times in the last 4 years, including the weapons shipment to 
Hezb

and a few other targets. They have always hedged attacks against Syria
against other political priorities. Why would their strike on Samir 
Quntar
prove that they are not 

[Marxism] Sharon Zukin

[Ernest Leif via Marxism]

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Does anyone know where I can find a transcript of her Robert Fitch memorial
speech?

Thanks

Ernest
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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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In much more adverse conditions than Greece, Cuba's leadership was able to
resist US demands for payment of expropriated properties for more than 50
years. Now, having forced Washington to the bargaining table, it has a
strong hand. Many of the Miami vultures are dead, roadkill in the current
context. And when Cuba puts the cost of the half-century blockade on the
scales, do you really think it will end up paying anything to Uncle Sam? 

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:l...@panix.com] 
Sent: Monday, December 21, 2015 11:12 AM
To: Richard Fidler; Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is
Possible

On 12/21/15 10:59 AM, Richard Fidler via Marxism wrote:
> Eric Toussaint recounts the history of the debt issue and
> the search for alternatives in the Greek left, going back to 2010 --
> including the various initiatives to conduct a public audit of the debt,
the
> record of SYRIZA and the successive retreats on the issue by the Tsipras
> leadership, the disastrous decisions taken from the beginning by the
SYRIZA
> government in February 2015, and the reasons for the Tsipras capitulation
in
> mid-July.

Toussaint does not seem to have any understanding of the relationship of 
forces. Cuba is now negotiating with the USA about compensating the 
vultures whose property was confiscated in 1960. If Cuba can be 
blackmailed in this fashion, isn't it a function of the power of capital 
rather than the mettle of its leadership?

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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 12/21/15 11:48 AM, Richard Fidler wrote:

In much more adverse conditions than Greece, Cuba's leadership was able to
resist US demands for payment of expropriated properties for more than 50
years.


Cuba would have likely collapsed in 1968 or so if the USSR had collapsed 
in 1965. When I refer to the relationship of forces, it is exactly that 
kind of element I am referring to. Venezuela did not have a favorable 
relationship of forces in the recent period. For all of the articles 
appearing now in places like the ISO press about how Maduro should have 
been for "socialism from below", the decision to have nationalized 
private property down to the last nail in the last bodega would have 
resulted in an economic blockade that brought the country to its knees a 
lot sooner.


Right now I am working on an article about Greece, Venezuela and the 
left for the North Star that will go into more depth on all this.

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[Marxism] Minority Sheet Metal Workers in New York Get Back Pay After Decades of Bias

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(A reminder that affirmative action has always had a strong class 
dimension notwithstanding Walter Benn Michaels's attempt to depict it as 
in the interests of capitalism.)


NY Times, Dec. 21 2015
Minority Sheet Metal Workers in New York Get Back Pay After Decades of Bias
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

The black, white and Hispanic craftsmen toil amid the bones of New York 
City’s unfinished office towers, threading air-conditioning ducts 
through ragged walls and ceilings, guiding the gleaming metal tubes from 
one set of hands to another.


Their union, Local 28 of the Sheet Metal Workers, was featured this year 
in advertising highlighting the changing face of the construction 
industry. “Opportunity. Diversity. Middle class careers,” reads one of 
the ads run by the city’s building trades association. “This is what 
union construction looks like.”


But the multiracial tableau obscures a stark racial divide: The union’s 
white members have received more work and larger pensions, data show. In 
contrast, minority members, who have lagged for decades, often struggle 
to find steady jobs and to earn enough credit to retire on time with 
full pensions.


Settlement in Bias Suit That Stalled for 37 YearsJAN. 16, 2008
Last month, the union began paying the first installments of $12.7 
million in back pay to hundreds of black and Hispanic members in a 
partial settlement of a bias lawsuit decades old — the oldest such case 
in the hands of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.


The union stands as a case study of how workplace discrimination has 
persisted in corners of the construction trades, according to federal 
officials, even as unions have become increasingly diverse.


Forty-four years after the Justice Department originally sued Local 28 
for refusing to admit minority workers, the union no longer bars 
nonwhites from membership, as it once did. Instead, the federal court 
has found, the local has consistently denied work opportunities to black 
and Hispanic members. The bias — more subtle and complex than in an 
earlier era — endures in the midst of the city’s building boom, 
officials say.


Similar allegations have emerged in lawsuits filed against a pipe 
fitters union in Chicago and an operating engineers local in New York 
City, among others. An operating engineers union in Philadelphia and an 
ironworkers local in New York City, also accused of discriminating 
against minorities, remain under court supervision, as does Local 28.


But the sheet metal workers’ case provides a rare, detailed view of 
discrimination’s cost and toll on black workers. It also offers insight 
into an insular world in which union officials and contractors have 
wielded considerable influence in determining which union members snare 
the well-paying, blue-collar jobs that have provided generations of 
white men a pathway into the middle class.


A statistical expert in the case in the Federal District Court of 
Manhattan has documented discrimination’s cost, worker by worker, in the 
form of lost hours, wages and pension credits.


Last month, the settlement checks went out to about 400 workers in 20 
states, arriving in mailboxes of tidy homes in the Bronx and Queens and 
modest apartments in Brooklyn. They landed in the hands of men and women 
who had watched in frustration as their white colleagues prospered while 
their own dreams deflated.


Frederick Aaron, 64, who has been jobless for more than a year, owed 
$5,000 to his landlord when his check arrived. Kenneth Smith, 59, who 
dropped out of the trade when his knees gave out, was scraping by on 
disability payments.


Melbourne Pearson, 56, who installs air-conditioning ducts around the 
city, said he lost so many hours of work during his 36 years on the job 
that he would have to work for eight years more before he could retire 
with a full pension.


The checks were the largest some workers had ever received — $10,000 
each, on average — but there was little sense of celebration. The 
settlement, which covers earnings lost between 1991 and 2006, represents 
19 percent of the damages that the workers’ lawyers anticipated they 
might have won at trial, not taking into account any reductions made in 
light of the union’s finances.


“I feel all right for the moment,” said Mr. Smith, who said the money 
would help cover his bills. “But this is no justice, man.”


Lawyers for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in court 
this year that minority workers, who account for about half of the 
union’s members, continued to receive fewer work hours than their white 
counterparts since 2006. The problem is particularly acute for black 

[Marxism] Behind the Black Flag: The Recruitment of an ISIS Killer

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Dec. 21 2015
Behind the Black Flag: The Recruitment of an ISIS Killer

Since the Syrian rebel leader Hassan Aboud joined ISIS, taking with him 
fighters and weapons, he has been behind a sprawling mix of battlefield 
action and crime.


By C. J. CHIVERS

Hassan Aboud’s practiced baritone belied the malevolence in his words.

“Oh Darraji!” he sang. “Our state provided us ammunition and sent us to 
assassinate you.”


That state is the self-proclaimed Islamic State, also known as ISIS or 
ISIL, the terrorist group that controls territory in Syria and Iraq and 
has recently projected violence to Ankara, Beirut, Paris and San 
Bernardino, Calif. A soft-spoken double-amputee sometimes carried to 
meetings by fellow gunmen, Mr. Aboud is an Islamic State commander who 
also directs a network of assassins, including those who killed Darraji, 
a former subordinate, with bullets and flame.


The recording of his singing circulated among past associates this year. 
A taunting dark requiem, it serves as evidence and confession. Mr. 
Aboud, who defected from Syria’s rebels to the terrorist group in 2014, 
was admitting to previously unsolved killings of former friends.


“We plucked Adeeb Abbas’s head,” he continued, naming another of his 
one-time deputies, blasted from a motorcycle by a roadside bomb. “We 
spilled his filthy blood.”


He then vowed to kill more, as a male chorus chanted to those marked to 
die: “We will liquidate every traitor.”


Since rising to prominence as an international menace, the Islamic State 
has tried to glorify its members, describing them as religious warriors 
who raised arms to protect fellow Sunni Muslims and serve their 
understanding of God. But the journey of Mr. Aboud, and his recruitment 
by ISIS, including with cash, departs from scripts emphasizing piety or 
civil defense.


It is the chronicle of an underground fighter maimed and darkened by his 
long fight, the biography — replete with rivalries and fratricide — of a 
proven and once popular Islamist commander whose actions turned more 
violent and vengeful as he moved into the Islamic State’s orbit.


Mr. Aboud, his former neighbors and associates say, abandoned the 
defense of his hometown for money, power and the license for viciousness 
that came with joining the Islamic State. His path resembled not the 
airbrushed arcs laid out in jihadist propaganda mills but a Middle 
Eastern mafia tale set against the corrupting effects of war.


The journey from jihadist rank-and-file to feared underground figure was 
shaped by multiple forces. These include the American invasion of Iraq 
in 2003 and the oppression of a border-straddling Sunni Muslim 
population by governments in Damascus and Baghdad. It was further stoked 
by the indiscriminate killing of civilians by Syrian security forces 
since 2011, then channeled by the patient plotting of a jihadist 
organization, once shattered, that revived itself to eclipse Al Qaeda.


Ultimately, his courtship by ISIS offers an unusually detailed look at 
how the group has selected commanders from a region that has produced 
uncountable militants since 2003. These chosen men, seduced by gifts and 
the Islamic State’s gloomy prestige, hold the terrain it needs to 
support its claim of being a caliphate.


Journalists for The New York Times met Mr. Aboud in Syria in 2013, as he 
led sieges around isolated army positions that were shelling the 
civilian population nearby; it was a fight he and the several hundred 
rebels he led, known as the Dawood Brigade, eventually won.


Sarmin, the town in the lowlands of Idlib Province where he 
headquartered his brigade, was itself under frequent shelling, and he 
was moving and accepting meetings with much more caution than many rebel 
commanders.


The interview was arranged by the son-in-law of his boss, but Mr. 
Aboud’s supporters had everyone wait in the basement of a mosque for 
part of the afternoon before leading the group to an abandoned building 
in the partially evacuated, battle-scarred town.


Mr. Aboud was rushed in from the outside by those who carried him. He 
had lost fighters in battle the previous day and seemed weary and 
suspicious of guests. His gray pants had been folded to hide his 
lower-leg stumps, which he crossed in front of himself as he sat on a 
cushion. He opened the conversation in a quiet voice, and threatened to 
kill the journalists if he were misquoted.


Abu Ayman, a bomb-maker who helped carry him into the room, spoke more 
than Mr. Aboud, who chose his words with care, even when repeating 
Islamist boilerplate.


He complained about the activities of many secular rebels, describing 

[Marxism] Fwd: Miami is Flooding - The New Yorker

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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The city of Miami Beach floods on such a predictable basis that if, out 
of curiosity or sheer perversity, a person wants to she can plan a visit 
to coincide with an inundation. Knowing the tides would be high around 
the time of the “super blood moon,” in late September, I arranged to 
meet up with Hal Wanless, the chairman of the University of Miami’s 
geological-sciences department. Wanless, who is seventy-three, has spent 
nearly half a century studying how South Florida came into being. From 
this, he’s concluded that much of the region may have less than half a 
century more to go.


We had breakfast at a greasy spoon not far from Wanless’s office, then 
set off across the MacArthur Causeway. (Out-of-towners often assume that 
Miami Beach is part of Miami, but it’s situated on a separate island, a 
few miles off the coast.) It was a hot, breathless day, with a brilliant 
blue sky. Wanless turned onto a side street, and soon we were 
confronting a pond-sized puddle. Water gushed down the road and into an 
underground garage. We stopped in front of a four-story apartment 
building, which was surrounded by a groomed lawn. Water seemed to be 
bubbling out of the turf. Wanless took off his shoes and socks and 
pulled on a pair of polypropylene booties. As he stepped out of the car, 
a woman rushed over. She asked if he worked for the city. He said he did 
not, an answer that seemed to disappoint but not deter her. She gestured 
at a palm tree that was sticking out of the drowned grass.


“Look at our yard, at the landscaping,” she said. “That palm tree was 
super-expensive.” She went on, “It’s crazy—this is saltwater.”


“Welcome to rising sea levels,” Wanless told her.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sea levels 
could rise by more than three feet by the end of this century. The 
United States Army Corps of Engineers projects that they could rise by 
as much as five feet; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration predicts up to six and a half feet. According to Wanless, 
all these projections are probably low. In his office, Wanless keeps a 
jar of meltwater he collected from the Greenland ice sheet. He likes to 
point out that there is plenty more where that came from.


“Many geologists, we’re looking at the possibility of a 
ten-to-thirty-foot range by the end of the century,” he told me.


We got back into the car. Driving with one hand, Wanless shot pictures 
out the window with the other. “Look at that,” he said. “Oh, my gosh!” 
We’d come to a neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes where the water 
was creeping under the security gates and up the driveways. Porsches and 
Mercedeses sat flooded up to their chassis.


“This is today, you know,” Wanless said. “This isn’t with two feet of 
sea-level rise.” He wanted to get better photos, and pulled over onto 
another side street. He handed me the camera so that I could take a 
picture of him standing in the middle of the submerged road. Wanless 
stretched out his arms, like a magician who’d just conjured a rabbit. 
Some workmen came bouncing along in the back of a pickup. Every few 
feet, they stuck a depth gauge into the water. A truck from the Miami 
Beach Public Works Department pulled up. The driver asked if we had 
called City Hall. Apparently, one of the residents of the street had 
mistaken the high tide for a water-main break. As we were chatting with 
him, an elderly woman leaning on a walker rounded the corner. She looked 
at the lake the street had become and wailed, “What am I supposed to 
do?” The men in the pickup truck agreed to take her home. They folded up 
her walker and hoisted her into the cab.


To cope with its recurrent flooding, Miami Beach has already spent 
something like a hundred million dollars. It is planning on spending 
several hundred million more. Such efforts are, in Wanless’s view, so 
much money down the drain. Sooner or later—and probably sooner—the city 
will have too much water to deal with. Even before that happens, Wanless 
believes, insurers will stop selling policies on the luxury condos that 
line Biscayne Bay. Banks will stop writing mortgages.


“If we don’t plan for this,” he told me, once we were in the car again, 
driving toward the Fontainebleau hotel, “these are the new Okies.” I 
tried to imagine Ma and Pa Joad heading north, their golf bags and 
espresso machine strapped to the Range Rover.


full: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami
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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 12/21/15 10:59 AM, Richard Fidler via Marxism wrote:

Eric Toussaint recounts the history of the debt issue and
the search for alternatives in the Greek left, going back to 2010 --
including the various initiatives to conduct a public audit of the debt, the
record of SYRIZA and the successive retreats on the issue by the Tsipras
leadership, the disastrous decisions taken from the beginning by the SYRIZA
government in February 2015, and the reasons for the Tsipras capitulation in
mid-July.


Toussaint does not seem to have any understanding of the relationship of 
forces. Cuba is now negotiating with the USA about compensating the 
vultures whose property was confiscated in 1960. If Cuba can be 
blackmailed in this fashion, isn't it a function of the power of capital 
rather than the mettle of its leadership?

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[Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Very important. Eric Toussaint recounts the history of the debt issue and
the search for alternatives in the Greek left, going back to 2010 --
including the various initiatives to conduct a public audit of the debt, the
record of SYRIZA and the successive retreats on the issue by the Tsipras
leadership, the disastrous decisions taken from the beginning by the SYRIZA
government in February 2015, and the reasons for the Tsipras capitulation in
mid-July. In the process he explains why and how an alternative course of
action, a Plan B, could and should have been taken. This article is an
important source for consultation in any balance-sheet of what happened to
Europe's first left government of the 21st century. -- Richard

http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article36730

For the text with the video on which it is based, see
http://cadtm.org/Greece-Why-Capitulate-Another-Way


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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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I will read with interest whatever you say about Venezuela, a quite
different situation than Cuba's. But your support of Tsipras's capitulation
in Greece does not augur well. With your reading of the relationship of
forces -- more importantly, what can be done about it -- we may as well pack
it in and be content with reading novels or watching films. 

-Original Message-
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:l...@panix.com] 
Sent: Monday, December 21, 2015 12:02 PM
To: Richard Fidler; Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is
Possible

On 12/21/15 11:48 AM, Richard Fidler wrote:
> In much more adverse conditions than Greece, Cuba's leadership was able to
> resist US demands for payment of expropriated properties for more than 50
> years.

Cuba would have likely collapsed in 1968 or so if the USSR had collapsed 
in 1965. When I refer to the relationship of forces, it is exactly that 
kind of element I am referring to. Venezuela did not have a favorable 
relationship of forces in the recent period. For all of the articles 
appearing now in places like the ISO press about how Maduro should have 
been for "socialism from below", the decision to have nationalized 
private property down to the last nail in the last bodega would have 
resulted in an economic blockade that brought the country to its knees a 
lot sooner.

Right now I am working on an article about Greece, Venezuela and the 
left for the North Star that will go into more depth on all this.

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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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Louis Proyect said:
Toussaint does not seem to have any understanding of the relationship of 
forces. Cuba is now negotiating with the USA about compensating the 
vultures whose property was confiscated in 1960. If Cuba can be 
blackmailed in this fashion, isn't it a function of the power of capital 
rather than the mettle of its leadership?

Ken Hiebert replies:
You could be right that the relationship of forces left no options for the 
Greek government.  Which suggests that a strategy that was based on winning 
election to government was mistaken.  What was the point of running hard for 
government if so little could be achieved in government?

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Re: [Marxism] Debt & Greece - Why Capitulate? Another Way Is Possible

[MM via Marxism]

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> On Dec 21, 2015, at 12:23 PM, Richard Fidler via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> -- more importantly, what can be done about it --

Insistence upon “realism" about the power of capital usually reinforces the 
power of capital.
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[Marxism] readings on Spain

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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(sorry for the blank previous email, I hit send accidentally)
In their election wrap-up, the Grant/Woodsies quote Iglesias thus:
"Today we have once again heard the voice of the working class, which
conquered its rights through strikes… the voice of the republic, of Largo
Caballero, of Companys, of Durruti, of Andreu Nin, of Salvador Allende…
Let’s take democracy to the economy... History is ours, and people make
history.” (
http://www.marxist.com/the-spanish-elections-a-blow-to-the-regime.htm )
IMO this, like the rest of his left-leaning comments during the campaign,
is pure demagogy (see in contrast his recent interview here:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/pablo-iglesias-interview-jacobin-podemos-spain-austerity/
). And it's only a matter of time before he turns back to the right.
But since he mentioned them, I would encourage comrades to read - and
recommend to younger comrades - documents at marxists.org mentioning all
those figures, in particular by using the search function and narrowing the
field to Trotsky and Morrow.
(And while waiting for Iglesias's turn - and to help forestall it to the
extent possible - we should begin discussing solidarity with particular
struggles which should flow from the renewed faith the election results
will give workers and oppressed nationalities in their own power.
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